All but the most naive would accept that U.S. casualty
figues in Iraq, both dead and injured, are being deliberately underreported,
but a story circulating that 73,000 have died is a complete hoax and
its advocates are disseminating harmful disinformation.

The worst of the bunch is probably this
website, which claims that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
issued a report "confirming 73,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq."

If you actually read
the report it becomes clear that the figure represents how many
veterans, whether retired or active duty, have died since the first
Gulf War in 1990 - from any cause and not solely as a result of fighting
in Iraq. The figure is merely a rough head count of how many veterans
are still living compared to those that have died since 1990.

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continues below)

Indeed, over 55,000 of the deaths are listed
under the ERA category - which means they were never even deployed
to Iraq during their militay service.

The fact that 73,000 veterans have died since 1990 does
not mean that they were all killed while fighting in Iraq and to report
such an assertion is to disseminate a deliberate hoax.

This disinformation is harmful to those who are seriously
trying to verify if the Pentagon's death toll figures are accurate and
will only be used by Neo-Cons as ammunition to claim that people who
question troop casualty figures are all using flawed data and skewing
figures.

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